By Miranda Murray and Alexander Ratz
BERLIN, April 15 (Reuters) – Germany pledged a further 20 million euros ($23.6 million) to Sudan this year, the development ministry said on Wednesday, ahead of an international aid conference hosted in Berlin that is aiming to gather more than $1 billion in funding commitments.
The brutal war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which enters its third year on Wednesday, has created what aid groups say is now the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Millions of people have been forced to flee their homes and widespread hunger has left large parts of the population relying on food assistance, while many state institutions are close to collapse.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Germany was speaking with both warring parties.
With development spending by traditional donors increasingly squeezed, the conference was aimed at keeping attention on Sudan as the global focus has increasingly shifted to wars raging in Ukraine and Iran.
“The hard truth is that diplomacy has simply not met the scale of this crisis,” said Comfort Ero, President & CEO of the International Crisis Group.
“The Berlin conference is an important signal that Sudan is not being forgotten. Yet the sad tragedy is that an end to the war looks as far away as ever,” she said.
Officials from more than 60 states as well as over 50 Sudanese and international NGOs are attending, but neither of the warring parties sent representatives in the absence of a ceasefire agreement. The RSF-run parallel government has also rejected the conference, saying political elements close to the army were included among the participants.
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper reiterated the need for humanitarian support to relieve the immediate suffering in Sudan but said the fighting needed to end as quickly as possible.
“We need to ensure that every possible pressure is put on those warring parties to reach the urgent ceasefire that we desperately need to see,” she said.
“SURPRISING AND UNACCEPTABLE”
Much attention will be devoted to ways of stopping the flow of arms but the task facing the international community has been complicated by the ongoing fighting.
The Sudanese government on Wednesday called the conference plans a “surprising and unacceptable” interference in its internal affairs and warned that engaging with paramilitary groups would undermine state sovereignty.
“This isn’t a quick fix,” Wadephul told German broadcaster Deutschlandfunk, “but keeping international attention on the humanitarian situation in Sudan is a substantial contribution to bringing the war to an end.”
Germany’s development ministry said ahead of the conference that it would expand Sudan aid by 20 million euros this year on top of around 155 million provided to Sudan and neighbouring countries hosting millions of Sudanese displaced by the war.
Germany aimed to gather funding pledges of at least $1 billion, added Wadephul.
It was not only an ethical obligation to ensure people did not face hunger, he said, but also in Germany’s interest to avoid facing a large migration influx similar to the one from the Middle East in 2015/16 as people were forced to flee.
($1 = 0.8483 euros)
(Reporting by Alexander Ratz, Writing by Miranda Murray and James Mackenzie; Editing by Linda Pasquini, Alex Richardson and Toby Chopra)
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